Early Recovey, The Big Picture

Hey, guys. Just fumbled through some technical difficulties there, but. Got it. This is Chris from Cadre. I got a nice one for you. I usually come to you with topics usually around early recovery, but recovery in general and what an alumni who was in really bad, who have figured this out to whatever degree ahead of you, enormous. And you don't really know it's happening. You see people, you hear people, you talk to people, you're taking in all kinds of information about their stories, and you're going, oh, man.

And you have a lot of these moments where you're like, didn't think of it that way. That was really. That was really cool. Something about that person seems to be really attractive. What are they doing in their recovery? So the examples, big one, a different way to look at things is huge. This is changing your own perspective about yourself, what you think, what you do. You sit in meetings, you talk to people, you hear them talk about how they think, you hear them talk about what they did. What were the consequences of that?

Did it work out? I was at a meeting on Saturday morning, and a guy was going on and on and on and on about gratitude. And the simple line in recovery is, you should be more grateful. But the reality of it is, if you hear that manifested in people's stories about what happens to them when they try to seek gratitude. When they try, maybe they have a sticky on their mirror, which I know is cheesy, be more grateful. The reality of it is, that is an incredibly effective thing to do, is to try to try to put yourself in a.

In a gratitude mindset. A really good sponsor will kind of keep nudging you into that. I remember my sponsor. I was four or five years sober, and I was, I don't know, probably b******* about something. And he's like, I think you need to write a gratitude list. And I'm like, hey, man, I'm not in 6th grade aa anymore. He's like, well, you sound like it, so write one anyway. The point being examples of others. Different way. I don't know how to explain this, except as a different. Having a different perspective on things.

Listening to people, looking at the way you react to things, things, how they react, and go, man, I've been reacting this way my whole life. I didn't really realize people could actually change the way they look at things. I didn't know those things were changeable. A lot of people, you hear the, wow, that's just me. And I'm like, well, change you because you need to change what you're doing. Because you're drunk in a ditch all the time. These are really big concepts about changing your perspective that you don't really hear people talk about.

Like, that's what I'm doing in my early recovery. I'm out here trying to change my perspective. Really. You're out there trying not to use and not to drink. It's not enough. It's not enough just to not drink. You got to ask more of yourself. You got to be willing to put this thing under the guise of, I want a life and that I can be proud of, and I want to be proud of the person I am. This process is about that. Go get a life. Go be the person you want to be. Don't just stop drinking. It's not enough.

Specifically, if you're living in, say, a sober living home or some sort of structured care, there's also some real benefits from that dynamic that you might not be seeing, and I wouldn't expect you to. If you're on your first trip around the sun, so to speak. In recovery, coming out of treatment, you just shed a layer of skin in treatment, and everyone you know is mad at you and upset and scared, and there's a lot of external influence on the addicts getting clean. That kind of doesn't really matter.

I mean, what really matters is, are you looking at this thing and going into this thing with the right sort of perspective? You need to surround yourself with people who really want to change because. Because change in early recovery is really. That's. That's it. That is it. We came to change, so how do we do it? It's contagious as h***. If you can get around it, change is contagious. Change for the better in recovery is really contagious. And you want to catch it. You want to get exposed to it as much as you can.

So let's just be specific for a minute about in the sober house where you might be caught up in. I have to share a room. Somebody ate my peanut butter. I can't get in the shower. And the reality of it is, if you take a step back and you say, what am I getting from this that I'm not recognizing? One is friendships that are unlike the friendships you've ever had. That's one you got to look out because those are coming. We recognize them as something completely different. Later. You'll figure out later, wow.

These friendships are completely different than the ones I used to have. That's. That's liquid gold, man. That's really valuable. Here's another one that comes from the experience of living in a sober living home. And I'm not trying to advertise sober living. I'm just saying here's a dynamic that's super powerful and it's happening right in front of you. Try to recognize that. You're going to see how people actually change. You're going to see people change. You're going to watch the process of people change.

You've probably, in your using life, heard people talking to you all the time about, man, you need to change. You need to change now. You get to watch it and model it and do it, and it's not that hard. It's really not that hard. And once you kind of give yourself to that and you kind of look at it with a new perspective, it's easy to make change. It's not as difficult as it seems. And I think it's important to go back and say, if this process is about having the life you want to have and being the person that you want to be, then the change isn't scary.

It's not hard, and it's not scary. It's actually really cool. You got to hang on to this perspective. A good sponsor, really good people in the sober community that want their lives to change, surround yourself with them, and this perspective, change will happen for you. So the things that you gave away, nobody gave it to you. You didn't buy it, you didn't steal it. You built your own recovery. Rocket fuel. Right on. Sign in. Sign up for Cadre. Some really cool, incredibly good looking people who want to help.

So you enjoy the rest of your day. Peace out.